'''The Bible and Earth's Free-Float in Space''' Job 26:7 while the common belief of the time (1500 B.C.E.) was the earth sat on the back of a large animal or giant. This is due to a simple observation of the stars moving around the pole star due to the earth spinning. Anyone who watches the stars on a clear night notices this. This has been known since Antiquity.

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'''The Bible and Earth's Free-Float in Space''' Job 26:7 while the common belief of the time (1500 B.C.E.) was the earth sat on the back of a large animal or giant.

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The earth is held in orbit by gravity and angular momentum. The earth does not hang upon nothing. To define nothing is to say not real or non-existent but beneath the earth (and all around it) we find empty space, cosmic dust, stars, etc. Job 38:4-6 refers to earth having a foundation and footings, in direct contradiction to the idea that it is unsupported. Job 26:11 says heaven is supported by pillars. Many verses throughout the Bible refer to a solid firmament.

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{{Response|This is due to a simple observation of the stars moving around the pole star due to the earth spinning. Anyone who watches the stars on a clear night notices this. This has been known since Antiquity.

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'''The Scriptures speak of Invisible Structure''' Hebrews 11:3. Science has recently discovered the universe is made of atoms, whereas scripture knew of this for 2,000 years. The ancient Greeks were already discussing the natural structure of the universe, for a long time the common belief was the universe was made of four elements. If the Bible were in any way scientific, this verse would obviously not begin "by faith" but "by observation"

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The earth is held in orbit by gravity and angular momentum. The earth does not hang upon nothing. To define nothing is to say not real or non-existent but beneath the earth (and all around it) we find empty space, cosmic dust, stars, etc. Job 38:4-6 refers to earth having a foundation and footings, in direct contradiction to the idea that it is unsupported. Job 26:11 says heaven is supported by pillars. Many verses throughout the Bible refer to a solid firmament.}}

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'''The Bible Reveals the Earth is Round''' Isaiah 40:22. The verse says the earth is a circle. Ray says the word ''chuwg'' translates to "circuit" or "compass" indicating a spherical not flat. Comfort says Isaiah was written between 740 and 680 B.C.E. and at least 300 years before Aristotle's book ''On the Heavens.'' However, Isiah and the Bible does not support a round earth.[http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Debunking_Christians/Page9.htm] Isaiah 11:12 refers to the "four quarters of the earth." A "Compass" is indeed flat, with an arrow connected to the disk. Daniel 4:20 says "The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth..." No matter how tall that tree is, there's no way it could be seen to the “ends of the Earth” on a spherical body!

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'''The Scriptures speak of Invisible Structure''' Hebrews 11:3. Science has recently discovered the universe is made of atoms, whereas scripture knew of this for 2,000 years.

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{{Response|The ancient Greeks were already discussing the natural structure of the universe, for a long time the common belief was the universe was made of four elements. If the Bible were in any way scientific, this verse would obviously not begin "by faith" but "by observation" }}

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'''The Bible and the Science of Oceanography''' Psalm 8:8. Ray tells a story about Matthew Maury (1806 - 1873) is considered the father of oceanography and discovered many things after reading this Bible verse. Maury was nowhere near the first to discover or write about currents; however, he was the first to unify all of these together into scientific writings and did make a lot of progress in the field. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon described the gulf stream. Benjamin Franklin produced a detailed map of the gulf stream in 1769 (37 years before Maury was born). Even though Maury may have produced many maps of ocean currents, it is clear that the currents' existence was known well before his time and it is highly unlikely Maury would not have been aware of it. Maury may have been inspired by Psalms to look for more currents, but that is hardly the same as discovering a new phenomenon based on Scripture.

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'''The Bible Reveals the Earth is Round''' Isaiah 40:22. The verse says the earth is a circle. Ray says the word ''chuwg'' translates to "circuit" or "compass" indicating a spherical not flat.

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{{Response|Comfort says Isaiah was written between 740 and 680 B.C.E. and at least 300 years before Aristotle's book ''On the Heavens.'' However, Isiah and the Bible does not support a round earth.[http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Debunking_Christians/Page9.htm] Isaiah 11:12 refers to the "four quarters of the earth." A "Compass" is indeed flat, with an arrow connected to the disk. Daniel 4:20 says "The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth..." No matter how tall that tree is, there's no way it could be seen to the “ends of the Earth” on a spherical body!}}

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'''The Bible and Radio Waves''' Job 38:35. Ray says this verse tells that light can be sent and manifest itself in speech. He says that all electromagnetic radiation (from x-rays to radio waves) travel at the speed of light. Comfort sites James Clerk Maxwell in ''Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia'' 1864 (3,300 years later) who discovered that electricity and light waves were the same thing. Job 38:19 says "Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?" Notice they conveniently forget to mention that light is also mentioned as dwelling, or staying in one place. Also, they ignore the fact that the bible treats darkness like it actually exists, when really it's the absence of light. Also, it's Job, which, once again, is a very poetic part of the bible. They also ignore Job 38:20: "That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?" Light and darkness do not have "bounds" or as the NIV translates it, places and dwellings (at least not one specific one).

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'''The Bible and the Science of Oceanography''' Psalm 8:8. Ray tells a story about Matthew Maury (1806 - 1873) is considered the father of oceanography and discovered many things after reading this Bible verse. Ray says the following "What does the Bible mean by “paths” of the seas? The sea is just a huge mass of water, how then could it have “paths?” Man discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850’s, but the Bible declared the science of oceanography 2,800 years ago."

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{{Response|First of all, lets address this part "''Man discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850’s''" Discovered the existence of ocean currents!?!? ANYBODY who has gone to the beach knows what an ocean current is, even the Neanderthal man could figure it out. Any sailor or trader going back thousands of years ago in ancient times knew the existence of ocean currents.

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'''The Bible and Entropy''' Isaiah 51:6, Psalm 102:25, 26 and Hebrews 1:11 indicate the earth is wearing out, and concludes this is about the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the law of Increase Entropy) and defines it as: that in all physical process, every ordered system over time tends to become more disordered. However, this is false. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing that everything leads to disorder. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order.

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Maury was nowhere near the first to discover or write about currents; however, he was the first to unify all of these together into scientific writings and did make a lot of progress in the field. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon described the gulf stream. Benjamin Franklin produced a detailed map of the gulf stream in 1769 (37 years before Maury was born). Even though Maury may have produced many maps of ocean currents, it is clear that the currents' existence was known well before his time and it is highly unlikely Maury would not have been aware of it. Maury may have been inspired by Psalms to look for more currents, but that is hardly the same as discovering a new phenomenon based on Scripture.}}

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'''The Bible and the Water Cycle''' Ecclesiastes 1:7. He also points out Ecclesiastes 1:3 and Amos 9:6, but he does not point out Job 38:22, for example, which says that snow and hail are kept in storehouses. Genesis 2:5-6 contradicts the water cycle. Ecclesiastes 1:7 does not describe the water cycle. It merely says that water returns to the source of streams; it does not say how

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'''The Bible and Radio Waves''' Job 38:35. Ray says this verse tells that light can be sent and manifest itself in speech. He says that all electromagnetic radiation (from x-rays to radio waves) travel at the speed of light. Comfort sites James Clerk Maxwell in ''Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia'' 1864 (3,300 years later) who discovered that electricity and light waves were the same thing.

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{{Response|Job 38:19 says "Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?" Notice they conveniently forget to mention that light is also mentioned as dwelling, or staying in one place. Also, they ignore the fact that the bible treats darkness like it actually exists, when really it's the absence of light. Also, it's Job, which, once again, is a very poetic part of the bible. They also ignore Job 38:20: "That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?" Light and darkness do not have "bounds" or as the NIV translates it, places and dwellings (at least not one specific one).}}

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'''The Bible and the First Law of Thermodynamics''' Genesis 2:1 Once again, we have to ask: "If this knowledge is so clear cut, why did no Christians make these predictions BEFORE the laws of thermodynamics were established?" Secondly, the idea of God creating matter is a direct violation of that same law. Energy and matter are coming from nowhere.

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'''The Bible and Entropy''' Isaiah 51:6, Psalm 102:25, 26 and Hebrews 1:11 indicate the earth is wearing out, and concludes this is about the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the law of Increase Entropy) and defines it as: that in all physical process, every ordered system over time tends to become more disordered.

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{{Response|This is false. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing that everything leads to disorder. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order.}}

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'''The Bible and Ship Dimensions''' Comfort uses Genesis 6 to support this, that God gave Noah the dimensions (30:5:3) that was later used in 1609 at Hoorn in Holland and then massively used in the 1900s. Comforts source is "Llyod's Register of Shipping" in the ''World Almanac.'' People have been building ships for thousands of years and boats for tens of thousands of years, so it's not unreasonable to assume they figured out the best ways to do so themselves, without having to be told by God. Also, the ideal length-to-width ratio of a ship depends on the purpose of the ship. Sailing vessels are typically built with a larger ratio; war ships have a small ratio to attain the required speed; bulk carriers are built with a large ratio because load capacity is more important than speed (the cargo does not depreciate during the voyage). Even in Biblical times this would have applied: ancient warships (rowed, fast) were built slimmer than cargo ships (sailed, large loading capacity).

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'''The Bible and the Water Cycle''' Ecclesiastes 1:7.

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{{Response|He also points out Ecclesiastes 1:3 and Amos 9:6, but he does not point out Job 38:22, for example, which says that snow and hail are kept in storehouses. Genesis 2:5-6 contradicts the water cycle. Ecclesiastes 1:7 does not describe the water cycle. It merely says that water returns to the source of streams; it does not say how.}}

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'''The Bible and Meteorological Laws''' Ray tries to defend the air cycles in Ecclesiastes 1:6. First of all, Ecclesiastes is all about how nothing matters and nothing changes. So it poetically refers to the wind as not really changing no matter what it does, or where it blows. Secondly, Ecclesiastes 1:5 shows a geocentric world view: "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." We now know that the sun does not actually rise, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear that way. So why couldn't God predict that?

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'''The Bible and the First Law of Thermodynamics''' Genesis 2:1 Ray says "The Hebrew word used here is the past definite tense for the verb “finished,” indicating an action

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completed in the past, never again to occur. The creation was “finished”— once and for all. That is what the First Law of Thermodynamics says. It states that neither matter nor energy can be either created or destroyed. There is no “creation” ongoing today. It is “finished” exactly as the Bible states."

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{{Response|Once again, we have to ask: "If this knowledge is so clear cut, why did no Christians make these predictions BEFORE the laws of thermodynamics were established?" Secondly, the idea of God creating matter is a direct violation of that same law. Energy and matter are coming from nowhere.}}

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'''The Bible and Science''' Ray include a quote from Richard Wurmbrand, ''Proof's of God's existence'', that science confirms what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years. he says the Christians hold the key to the secrets of the universe, and they should be the owners of the lock and key )that is show there is no conflict between science ad religion).

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'''The Bible and Ship Dimensions''' Comfort uses Genesis 6 to support this, that God gave Noah the dimensions (30:5:3) that was later used in 1609 at Hoorn in Holland and then massively used in the 1900s. Comforts source is "Llyod's Register of Shipping" in the ''World Almanac.''

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{{Response|People have been building ships for thousands of years and boats for tens of thousands of years, so it's not unreasonable to assume they figured out the best ways to do so themselves, without having to be told by God. Also, the ideal length-to-width ratio of a ship depends on the purpose of the ship. Sailing vessels are typically built with a larger ratio; war ships have a small ratio to attain the required speed; bulk carriers are built with a large ratio because load capacity is more important than speed (the cargo does not depreciate during the voyage). Even in Biblical times this would have applied: ancient warships (rowed, fast) were built slimmer than cargo ships (sailed, large loading capacity). }}

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However, as we have reviewed, none of the above "proofs" presented are not extraordinary or cannot be obtain with simple observation. With a bit of literacy analysis, it is easy to make a book of fables look as you want it, but if the Bible was truly a source of scientific knowledge and science confirms what is in it, then we would expect Christians to point out in their Bible several breakthroughs in physics, medicine, chemistry, etc. that are unknown to modern science. However, we do not see this. Instead, we have science making discoveries and Christians trying to create an illusion that the Bible already knew of it. Muslim do the exact same thing, such as point out the Qur'an accurately predicted the Big Bang, speed of light, reproductive systems, plat tectonics, and such but their claims are no more credible then Christians.

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'''The Bible and Meteorological Laws''' Ray tries to defend the air cycles in Ecclesiastes 1:6.

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{{Response|First of all, Ecclesiastes is all about how nothing matters and nothing changes. So it poetically refers to the wind as not really changing no matter what it does, or where it blows. Secondly, Ecclesiastes 1:5 shows a geocentric world view: "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." We now know that the sun does not actually rise, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear that way. So why couldn't God predict that?}}

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'''The Bible and Science''' Ray include a quote from Richard Wurmbrand, ''Proof's of God's existence'', that science confirms what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years. he says the Christians hold the key to the secrets of the universe, and they should be the owners of the lock and key )that is show there is no conflict between science ad religion).

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{{Response|However, as we have reviewed, none of the above "proofs" presented are not extraordinary or cannot be obtain with simple observation. With a bit of literacy analysis, it is easy to make a book of fables look as you want it, but if the Bible was truly a source of scientific knowledge and science confirms what is in it, then we would expect Christians to point out in their Bible several breakthroughs in physics, medicine, chemistry, etc. that are unknown to modern science. However, we do not see this. Instead, we have science making discoveries and Christians trying to create an illusion that the Bible already knew of it. Muslim do the exact same thing, such as point out the Qur'an accurately predicted the Big Bang, speed of light, reproductive systems, plat tectonics, and such but their claims are no more credible then Christians.}}

==Chapter 2: The Incredible Book of Job==

==Chapter 2: The Incredible Book of Job==

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==Chapter 3: Medical Science and the Bible==

==Chapter 3: Medical Science and the Bible==

'''The Bible and the laws of Hygiene''' Here, Ray tries to portray Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis as the founder of the laws of hygiene and that the Bible led him to his discoveries. Ray says that Semmelweies was horrified at the terrible death rate of women who gave birth in hospitals. As many as 30 percent died after child birth. Semmelweis noted that doctors would examine the bodies of patients who died, then, without washing their hands, go straight to the next ward and examine expectant mothers. This was their normal practice, because the presence of microscopic diseases was unknown. Semmelweis insisted that doctors wash their hands before each examination, and the death rate immediately dropped to two percent. Ray tells us to "Look at the specific instructions that God gave thousands of years ago to His people for when they encountered disease: "And when he that has an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean" (Leviticus 15:13). Until recent years, doctors washed their hands in a bowl of water, leaving invisible germs on their hands. However, the Bible says specifically to wash under "running water.""

'''The Bible and the laws of Hygiene''' Here, Ray tries to portray Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis as the founder of the laws of hygiene and that the Bible led him to his discoveries. Ray says that Semmelweies was horrified at the terrible death rate of women who gave birth in hospitals. As many as 30 percent died after child birth. Semmelweis noted that doctors would examine the bodies of patients who died, then, without washing their hands, go straight to the next ward and examine expectant mothers. This was their normal practice, because the presence of microscopic diseases was unknown. Semmelweis insisted that doctors wash their hands before each examination, and the death rate immediately dropped to two percent. Ray tells us to "Look at the specific instructions that God gave thousands of years ago to His people for when they encountered disease: "And when he that has an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean" (Leviticus 15:13). Until recent years, doctors washed their hands in a bowl of water, leaving invisible germs on their hands. However, the Bible says specifically to wash under "running water.""

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{{Response|Keep reading down Leviticus 15, it explains how to finish this sterilization process. "...and bathe his flesh in running water,and he shall be clean. On the eighth day, he shall take to turtledoves, or two pigeons, and come before the Lord unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and give them unto the priest, and the priest shall offer them, one for suffering, one for burnt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord for his issue." Semmelweis did not make his discoveries based on the Bible, because washing your hands prior to chopping up dead burnt pigeons to appease some desert god is more voodoo than medicine.}}

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Keep reading down Leviticus 15, it explains how to finish this sterilization process. "...and bathe his flesh in running water,and he shall be clean. On the eighth day, he shall take to turtledoves, or two pigeons, and come before the Lord unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and give them unto the priest, and the priest shall offer them, one for suffering, one for burnt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord for his issue." Semmelweis did not make his discoveries based on the Bible, because washing your hands prior to chopping up dead burnt pigeons to appease some desert god is more voodoo than medicine.

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==Chapter 4: Science and Genesis==

==Chapter 4: Science and Genesis==

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==Chapter 5: Scientists and the Bible==

==Chapter 5: Scientists and the Bible==

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Ray starts off this chapter with a piece from young earth creationist Henry M. Morris. Morris outright claims the following: "Many of the great scientists of the past who founded and developed key principles of sciences were creationists."

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Here are the names Morris provides;

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*Physics: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin

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*Chemistry: Boyle, Dalton, Ramsay

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*Biology: Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur

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*Geology: Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Agassiz

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*Astronomy: Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Maunder

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Morris is quick to point out that it was the Catholic Church who persecuted Galileo, NOT the Christian Church.

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{{Response|Basically, Morris and Ray Comfort are trying to rewrite history. There is a creeping new delusion among conservative Christians that [[Christianity invented science]]. As Morris puts it, the above men "''founded and developed key principles''" - bear in mind the "founded" part. Where these men responsible for biology, chemistry, biology, geology and astronomy? The answer is simply NO.

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These scientific fields were founded and developed long before Christianity ever existed, all the way back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and such (in an age where virtually everyone were polytheistic pagans). For instance, biology goes back (perhaps further) to Aristotle, who studied and dissected animals and classified animals into categories. The Greek scientist, Anaximander had already proposed that modern forms of life, -including humans- had evolved from simpler forms. Ancient scientists developed the study of astronomy. Aristarchus began measuring the distances of the moon, sun and planets, and proposed the first heliocentric theory. In Rhodes, Hipparchus discovered and measured celestial precession, observed the first supernova, established the first detailed scientific star charts, made numerous advances in planetary theory, and developed the first scientific system for predicting lunar and solar eclipses. This is just to name a few. While the scientists mentioned by Morris are significant, their developments in advancing scientific principles rest on the discoveries of earlier great scientists.}}

==Chapter 6: Biology and the Bible==

==Chapter 6: Biology and the Bible==

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'''The Bible and Plant Life'''

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Ray points out that plants need sunlight, water, soil and minerals to survive. He states the Bible reveals this truth when in Genesis 1:3 and onward shows that God first created light, then water, then soil, and finally created plants.

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{{Response|Here is what is left out; plants need light for photosynthesis. For that, they need sunlight. But Genesis says plants were created AFTER the sun, which would make it impossible for plants to survive.

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So what is this "light" mentioned? Nobody knows. Genesis says these events took place on separate days, but what are days? Days are measured by earth's time, which is based on the earth's orbit around the sun. So how can there be "days" before there is a sun? For that matter, how can there be light without a light source, like suns and stars. Genesis the sun is a source of light of the day, but it also says the moon produces its own too! Well, we know this is obviously not true either.

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Also, how was the earth a planet before soil came into the picture? Was is a giant ball of liquid, and then suddenly dirt manifested inside it and grew? This is ridiculous.}}

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'''Bible Statements Consistent with Biology'''

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Ray argues that Leviticus 17:11, written in 1400 BCE, shows that blood is the source of life. He declares up until 120 years ago, doctors performed a "blood test" in which they would bleed out their patients to help discover what was wrong with them.

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{{Response|The view of blood as the essence for life predates the Bible. The Code of Hammurabi from Mesopotamia (about 1727 B.C.E., before Leviticus was written) has a phrase which translates, "to pour out his life-blood like water." In the Enuma Elish, blood was an essential ingredient which mankind was created from. Ugaritic and Egyptian sources also note the importance of blood. That blood is essential to life is not hard to figure out, especially to people who slaughter livestock.

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Finally, hypothetically, if we had two patients, and we took all the blood from one of them, he would surely die. Christians like Ray would point to this and say "AHA! See, blood IS the essence of life." Hold on, now we move to the second patient, and without removing the blood, instead we remove the brain. The patient dies as expected. By the Christians logic, the brain is the essence of life. Rather, this is not true either, but the point is is that blood is not ''the'' essence of life.}}

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Ray says that "William Harvey ''discovered'' that blood circulation is the key factor to physical life - confirming what the Bible said 3,000 years earlier" (emphasis added).

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{{Response|'''WRONG WRONG WRONG''' William Harvey did not "discover" blood circulation is the key factor to physical life - even if he did he is still wrong. First of all, pagan scientists have known for centuries that the heart was the mechanism for pumping blood, but also a vital key for life.

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Now, is blood the key factor to physical life? Absolutely not. There are dozens of species today that are alive without blood or a circulatory system. For instance, the jellyfish does not have blood, neither do sponges. Also, plants are living beings too, but they do not have hearts or blood.}}

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'''The Bible and Biogenesis'''

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Ray points to all the times when genesis mentions that animals produce after "their own kind" and concludes that this shows that only life begats life.

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{{Response|Without the need to explain what the term "kind" means, any biologist will explain that life can appear naturally.}}

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'''Natural Kinds validate the Bible'''

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Ray quotes Stephen J. Gould that "natural kinds" fits perfectly with pre-Darwinian tenets of creationism. It also Louis Agassiz believed that species are God's individual thoughts made incarnate.

==Chapter 7: The Bible's 100% Accurate Prophecies==

==Chapter 7: The Bible's 100% Accurate Prophecies==

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Ray argues the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible testify to its truth and validity, such as the bible predicted empires like Greece and Rome would fall in Daniel 2:39,40 and the destruction of Tyre and Sidon in Isaiah 23.

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{{Response|None of these prophecies are significant or convincing. There are several mundane ways in which a prediction of the future can be fulfilled:

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# Retrodiction. The "prophecy" can be written or modified after the events fulfilling it have already occurred.

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# Vagueness. The prophecy can be worded in such a way that people can interpret any outcome as a fulfillment. Nostradomus's prophecies are all of this type. Vagueness works particularly well when people are religiously motivated to believe the prophecies.

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# Inevitability. The prophecy can predict something that is almost sure to happen, such as the collapse of a city. Since nothing lasts forever, the city is sure to fall someday. If it has not, it can be said that according to prophecy, it will.

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# Denial. One can claim that the fulfilling events occurred even if they have not. Or, more commonly, one can forget that the prophecy was ever made.

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# Self-fulfillment. A person can act deliberately to satisfy a known prophecy.

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There are no prophecies in the Bible that cannot easily fit into one or more of those categories. The prophecies from Daniel were written after the event took place, but it is inevitable that civilizations arise and fall. Finally, Ray is pleased to present that Isaiah 23 was fulfilled when Alexander t Great conquered it. The sad thing is Ezekiel 26 predicts that Nebudchadnezzar would destroy Tyre and make it "as a bare rock". Best of all, biblical scholars are in agreement that this book was written hundreds of years before Tyre was destroyed. Yet we know from history that it was Alexander the Great, not Nebudchadnezzar, who destroyed Tyre. }}

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'''The Bible's Prediction of the Middle-East Conflict''' Ray says that in Genesis 16:12 that the descendants of Ishmael are the Arabs, and the Bible say the descendants will be will men an every man would be against them while they [the Arabs] dwell in the midst of their "brethren." Ray says the Jews are the Arab's brethren.

{{Response|The gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:5-6) claims that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem fulfils this prophecy. But this is unlikely for two reasons.

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# "Bethlehem Ephratah" in Micah 5:2 refers not to a town, but to a clan: the clan of Bethlehem, who was the son of Caleb’s second wife, Ephrathah (1 Chronicles 2:18, 2:50-52 & 4:4).

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# The prophecy (if that is what it is) does not refer to the Messiah, but rather to a military leader, as can be seen from Micah 5:6. This leader is supposed to defeat the Assyrians, which, of course, Jesus never did. It should also be noted that Matthew altered the text of Micah 5:2 by saying: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah" rather than "Bethlehem Ephratah" as is said in Micah 5:2. He did this, intentionally no doubt, to make this verse appear to refer to the town of Bethlehem rather than the family clan.}}

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{{Response|Isaiah 7:14. Isiah 7:14 does not say "virgin." The Hebrew word used is ''almah'' which means "young woman." Almah does not mean virgin, virgins are called out specifically (the word is ''bethula''). Some have argued that almah may mean virgin, but this is not the case. Almah is used about nine different times in the old Testament, each one not referring to a virgin.}}

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{{Response|Zechariah 11. Matthew says Jesus fulfilled the prophecy in Jeremiah, but Jeremiah has no verse that is even similar to the words given in Matthew. Matthew confused Jeremiah with Zechariah.

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Zechariah 11:12-13 –“So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.” To make things worse, Zechariah is predicting about a '''false prophet'''.}}

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{{Response|Psalm 22:16. Fundamentalists have always claimed that the latter part of Psalm 22:16 "They pierced my hands and my feet" (which we shall designate as Psalm 22:16b) is a direct prophecy of the crucifixion; with the "piercing" referring to the nails going through Jesus' hands and feet. Although this is not the reading found in the Hebrew Masoretic text, support is claimed from the readings found in a Dead Sea Scroll fragment and in ancient versions of the Bible such as the Septuagint and the Vulgate.

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This claim is false, for a few reasons:

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''The Hebrew Text Behind the King James Version''

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Despite the claims of its accurate rendition of the original text, the Hebrew equivalent for "they pierced" was not found in the manuscripts available to the translators of the King James Version. Indeed the word rendered in those manuscripts means "like a lion".

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''The Dead Sea Scrolls''

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The evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, is ambiguous at best. The word found there, kaaru, has no known meaning and may actually be meaningless.

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Ancient Versions

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A) Before looking at the readings of the ancient versions, it is important to know some preliminary background information about them first.

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B) A careful analysis of the readings given in the ancient versions does not support "they pierced" as the correct translation. Indeed the analysis shows that there were two extant readings in the Hebrew text, one being kaari (like a lion) and the other kaaru. The very fact that translators did not translate the latter word consistently showed that even by that time, the meaning of that word was no longer known.

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''Use of Psalm 22:16b by the Early Christians''

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No early Christian writer, including the evangelists and Paul, until the time of Justin around the middle of the second century CE, made any explicit reference to the word "piercing" in Psalm 22:16b in relation to the crucifixion of Jesus although there were ample opportunities to do so.

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A consideration of the various internal evidence favors "like a lion" as the correct rendering of the word found in Psalm 22:16b.

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We can conclude with certainty that there is no reference to the crucifixion in Psalm 22:16b and with some probability that the correct reading there remains "like a lion".}}

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{{Response|Finally, Isaiah 53 is not about a suffering messiah[http://www.godlesshaven.com/articles/isaiah53.html].}}

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'''The Bible Predicted the Birth of a Nation''' Ray argues that Isaiah 66:7,8 predicted the foundation of Israel.

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Bare in mind, the Bible contains many failed prophecies, such as Isaiah 19:5 predicting that the Nile River would dry up (it never has).

==Chapter 8: Astronomy and the Bible==

==Chapter 8: Astronomy and the Bible==

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==Chapter 10: Archaeology and the Bible==

==Chapter 10: Archaeology and the Bible==

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'''Archaeology and History Attest to the Bible''' The first section of this chapter was written by Richard Fales, PhD, who has been described as a professor of Archaeology, Greek, and Apologetics at the unaccredited, and apparently now defunct, Pacific International University.

The section does make a valid point that the gap of a few decades between the events in the New Testament and when they were written down is relatively short in comparison to other works.

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{{Response|However, Fales misdates the oldest manuscripts by upwards of half a century and the continues with the demonstrably false claim that "it can be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the New Testament says exactly the same thing today as it originally did nearly 2,000 years ago." Fales also ignores the fact that all of the oldest manuscripts are '''fragments''', typically smaller than a credit card and the first complete book of the New Testament was written no earlier than 200 CE. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri]

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Next Fales sets up the strawman that critics claim "there are no ancient writings about Jesus outside the New Testament". While he does list a number of extra-biblical sources that refer to Jesus or simply to Christians, Fales falsely claims that these other sources confirm Jesus' "birth, ministry, death and resurrection". This is followed by an extremely vague and extremely short history of the biblical canon. Fales claims that "Each document, being accepted as it was penned in the first century, was then passed on to Christians of the next century," obviously ignoring the "documents" written by Christians in the first century that didn't make it into the canon.}}

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'''The Dead See Scrolls Bear Out the Bible''' This section is written by archaeologist and biblical scholar William F Albright, who received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Albright].

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{{Response|Despite the relatively harmless claims, Albright has been highly criticized with comments like "historical interpretation can make no claim to be objective, proceeding as it does from a methodology which distorts its data by selectivity which is hardly representative".[http://jot.sagepub.com/content/2/4/35.extract] In short, this section only serves to demonstrate that what we currently have in the Old Testament is likely to be the same as what was present 3000 years ago.}}

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The following sections contains several quotes from people of varying levels of authority. These quotes and the examples provided demonstrate that the Old Testament is historical accurate only at the level Ben Hur and Cleopatra are. Although, some of the characters and a few events are considered truly historical, neither the movies nor Comforts description go beyond that. For example, Comfort points out the bible mentions the Hittite Empire and Ponitius Pilate, which archaeological evidence also show existed. Comfort naturally avoids mentioning the fact that both of these are attested to by many, many other sources.

==Chapter 11: The Bible's Historical Accuracy==

==Chapter 11: The Bible's Historical Accuracy==

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'''The Bible's Historical Accuracy''' This a quote from apologist John McRay, who, as in other places is quoting in praise of Luke being a "scrupulously accurate historian."

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{{Response|While ignoring the contradictions in Lukes account to other Gospels writers and other contemporary historians, McRay mentions Luke's claim to fame as being "references to thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities and nine islands, finding not a single mistake." So McRay (although with a number of other people) believe that being able to accurately record the places one visits makes them an historian. }}

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'''History Attests to Scripture''' In this section, Comfort maintains the Bible is historical accurate because both Matthew and Luke refer to the the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

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{{Response|It is no wonder that Comfort ignores the fact that most critical scholars, including the late Raymond Brown, a catholic priest, date both of these Gospels to ''after'' the destruction of the temple.(Brown, Raymond E. (1997). Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Anchor Bible. pp. 226. ISBN 0-385-24767-2.) It should be no surprise that they would have gotten it right.}}

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'''Historian Attests to the Account of Jesus''' This is a full quote of Josephus' reference to Jesus in his "The Wars of the Jews".

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{{Response|However, Comfort fails to mention that most scholars believe the statement "He was the Christ" is a later Christian addition. Note some scholars believe the original was "He was ''called'' the Christ", indicating this is what people claim and not necessarily what Josephus believed.

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Most scholars, including most fundamentalist scholars, admit that at least some parts of this paragraph cannot be authentic [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/testimonium.html Testimonium Flavianum]. Many are convinced that the entire paragraph is a forgery, an interpolation inserted by Christians at a later time [http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm Josephus on Jesus: Forgery and Fraud?] [http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_008.htm Eusebius of Caesarea forged Testimonium Flavianum]. There are at least seven reasons for this:

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# The paragraph is absent from early copies of the works of Josephus. For example, it does not appear in Origen’s second century version of Josephus, in Origen Contra Celsum, where Origen fiercely defended Christianity against the heretical views of Celsus. Origen quoted freely from Josephus to prove his points, but never once used this paragraph, which would have been the ultimate ace up his sleeve. In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear at all until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine. Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the emperor, was instrumental in crystallizing and defining the version of Christianity that was to become orthodox, and he is the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus. Eusebius once wrote that it was permissible "medicine" for historians to create fictions — prompting historian Jacob Burckhardt to call Eusebius “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.”

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# The fact that the Josephus-Jesus paragraph shows up at this point in history—at a time when interpolations and revisions were quite common and when the emperor was eager to demolish Gnostic Christianity and replace it with literalistic Christianity—makes the passage quite dubious. Many scholars believe the Eusebius was the forger and the interpolater of the paragraph on Jesus that magically appears in the works of Josephus after more than two centuries.

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# Josephus would not have called Jesus “the Christ” or “the truth.” Whoever wrote these phrases was a believing Christian. Josephus was a messianic Jew, and if he truly believed Jesus was the long-awaited messiah (Christ), he certainly would have given more than a passing reference to him. Josephus never converted to Christianity. Origen reported that Josephus was “not believing in Jesus as Christ.”

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# The passage is out of context. Book 18 (“Containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon”) starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 C.E. and talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, to which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus. He discussed Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on. Chapter 3 starts with sedition against Pilate, who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem. The Jews protested. Pilate sent spies into Jewish ranks with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then in the middle of all these troubles comes the curiously quiet paragraph about Jesus, followed immediately by: “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...” Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be “another terrible misfortune.” If he truly thought Jesus was “the Christ,” this would have been a glorious story of victory. It is only a Christian (someone like Eusebius) who might have considered Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy. Paragraph three can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter. In fact, it flows better without it. The phrase “to this day” shows that this is a later interpolation. There was no “tribe of Christians” during Josephus’ time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

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# Josephus appears not to know anything else about the Jesus outside of this tiny paragraph and an indirect reference concerning James, the “brother of Jesus” (see below). He does not refer to the gospels now known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or to the writing or activities of Paul, though if these stories were in circulation at that time he ought to have known about them and used them as sources. Like the writings of Paul, Josephus’ account is silent about the teachings or miracle of Jesus, although he reports the antics of other prophets in great detail. He makes no mention of the earthquake or eclipse at the crucifixion, which would have been universally known in that area if they had truly happened. He adds nothing to the Gospels narratives, and says nothing that would not have been believed by Christians already, whether in the first or fourth century. In all of Josephus’ voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere outside of this tiny paragraph. He relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus. He lists the activities of many other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the magician and the Egyptian Jew Messiah, but is mute about the life of one whom he claims (if he wrote it) is the answer to his messianic hopes.

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# The paragraph mentions that the “divine prophets” foretold the life of Jesus, but Josephus neglects to mention who these prophets were or what they said. In no other place does Josephus connect any Hebrew prediction with the life of Jesus. If Jesus truly had been the fulfillment of divine prophecy, as Christians believe (and Josephus was made to say), he would have been the one learned enough to document it.

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# The hyperbolic language of the paragraph is uncharacteristic of a careful historian: “... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him ...” This sounds more like sectarian propaganda — in other words, more like the New Testament — than objective reporting. It is very unlike Josephus.}}

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'''The Bible's Harmony Attest to Its Inspiration''' As the title indicates, in this section Comfort claims that the consistency allegedly maintained throughout the Bible is proof of its divine inspirations.

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{{Response|Comfort obviously fails to mention all of the inconsistencies and errors that need to be often addressed by various authors with typically different explanations.}}

==Chapter 12: Evolution and the Bible==

==Chapter 12: Evolution and the Bible==

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Comfort begins this chapter with "If you have read through this book with an open mind, you may be wondering how the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible. The answer is they are not."

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{{Response|This coming from a person who has no interest in honestly learning about evolution, and calls his own biases "honest." For instance, Ray's book [[You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (book)|You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think]], in the conclusion Ray talks about the four major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity). Ray then goes through them to asses them to decide which one people should choose. Ray assess them with the preconception that Christianity is true. Ray faults Buddhism for not solving the "problem of sin and the reality of Hell." Ray faults Hinduism for not solving the problem proposed in Christianity. This bias and presupposition has been made clear to Ray, but yet he still believes he never had a presupposition and was being totally honest.

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As for evolution and the Bible being compatible, that really depends of the individuals perception of faith. Billions of Christians accept evolution as true, even numerous Popes have stated that the theory of evolution and Christianity are not incompatible. However, to Ray (a Bible literalist) if evolution is true then the Bible must be false. To save much trouble, evolution is true (that is a fact), but Ray will never accept that and would rather live a life of fantasy and delusion rather than accept an observable reality.

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Ray's reasons for why the Bible is true is because the Bible states that every animal brings forth after it's own "kind" but he does not define what kind means. What separates man from the other animals? The Bible says that the "flesh" of man is different from the "flesh" of beasts. This is blatantly not true. Humans are a species of primate, which is a category of mammal, which is a category of vertebrate, which is a category of animal. This was known more than 2000 years ago. }}

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Ray says he accepts "[[microevolution]]" as he terms it "variations within a species." Ray states the following, "But there is ''no'' scientific evidence for "[[macroevolution]]"——one species evolving into another."

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{{Response|This last statement is far from true [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/]. We have observed and documented hundreds of instances when [http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html species evolve into new species]. Ray says the claim that man evolved from primates is an example of macroevolution, however it is actually microevolution. Man is a primate right now.}}

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'''Philosophy Professor Convinced''' In this section, Ray tries to convince the reader that belief in the Bible is justifiable because of a man named Prince Derek, a philosophy professor at Cambridge university, found the Bible more reliable than any other "alternative."

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{{Response|This is a fallacy known as [[appeal to authority]]. What does he mean by "alternative"? Alternative faith? Alternative philosophy? And Prince Derek's field, according to Ray, is in philosophy, not science. But the same exact argument can be shown in hundreds of universities were professors lose their faith left and right.}}

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'''Evolution: Fact or Fiction?''' Ray says that evolution provides more questions than answers.

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{{Response|This is not an accurate statement, but it is good that questions exist in science. Science is always looking for new questions to answer.}}

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The reason why evolution seems illogical is because Ray does not know the answer to such questions like the first bird. Here are his questions,

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<blockquote>

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Did the bird breathe? Did it breathe before it evolved lungs? How did it do this? Why did it evolve lungs if it was happy surviving without them? How did it know that it needed to be evolved if its brain hadn't been evolved yet? Did the bird have a mouth? How did it eat before it evolved a mouth? Where did the mouth send the food before the stomach evolved? How did the bird have energy if it didn't eat (because it didn't yet have a mouth)? How did the bird see what there was to eat before its eyes evolved? Evolution is intellectual suicide. It is an embarrassment.

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</blockquote>

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{{Response|Reading the above questions is an intellectual embarrassment. Is anything like this similar to how Darwin described it? Has any evolutionary scientist ever described it like this? Does Ray think that evolutionary scientists claim that birds were once eyeless, mouthless, and lacked certain internal organs?}}

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Ray then goes on to quote several people. He first quotes Prof. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center for Scientific Research, "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."

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{{Response|However, Ray and other creationists have taken [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part12.html this quote out of context]. This quote comes from 1984, but it did not come from Bounoure. "Evolution is a fairy tale for adults" is not from Bounoure but from Jean Rostand (way back in 1959), who did not even say "Evolution" but "transformation." Rostand DDI say the following: "Transformism may be considered as accepted, and no scientist, no philosopher, no longer discusses [questions - ED.] the fact of evolution." Rostand was an atheist, and he clearly defended evolution, calling it a "fact." Bounoure was never Director or a member of the CNRS, he expressing his distaste at those in his day who argued over the "principles" of evolution, "how" it took place, whether via Lamarckian or Darwinian.}}

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Second, Ray quotes Michael Ruse from his book ''Darwin's Theory: an Exercise in Science'', "An increasing number of evolutionists...argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all...Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials."

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{{Response|Why the spaces in-between phrases? This is a clear sign of creationist quote-mines. Even the original (which does support evolution) can be taken with a large grain of salt due to the lack of credibility that Ruse has in this domain.}}

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Thirdly, Ray quotes Dr. T. N. Tahmisian of the Atomic Energy Commission, "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever." (1974)

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{{Response|Here is the problem: '''''There is no reference in any government agency website as to the existence of a Dr. T. N. Tahmisian'''''.}}

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Finally, Ray quotes British journalist and philosopher Malcolm Muggeridge, "I am convinced myself that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it has applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has." (1981)

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{{Response|First of all, Ray has already demonstrated that Muggeridge does not have the correct credentials to turn to on the subject of evolution, biology, or science.}}

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'''The Evolution of the Theory''' Ray tries to explain the story of the concept of evolution came to be by quoting a story from ''Out Time: The Illustrated History of the 20 Century''.

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Next, Ray lists several hoaxes, like [[Piltdown Man]] and Heidelberg Man. Ray argues that Neanderthal man is not evidence for evolution, because it has been discovered that Neanderthal Man died of exposure to disease and was "fully human, not ape."

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{{Response|The British museum touted the “Piltdown man” as authentic, but the American Museum of Natural History displayed it only as a “mixture of ape and man fossils”, which is what it eventually turned out to be.

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There was no way to adequately examine such things back in 1915. Chemical tests –common today- didn’t yet exist and we didn’t yet have a practical understanding of radiation. And before the first australopiths were discovered, we didn’t know exactly what to expect of the links that were then still missing between humans and the other apes known at that time. But as we began filling in the gaps in human evolution with thousands of legitimate fossils, a pattern emerged which left Piltdown an increasingly obvious anomaly. Consequently it was taken off display and stored away almost continuously for decades. It lost importance in most discussions because, in light of everything else we discovered over the next few decades, it just never fit, and was eventually dismissed from the list of potential human ancestors for that reason.

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As the years wore on, criticism arose against everyone who ever promoted the Piltdown collection because there seemed to be so much wrong with it. Finally, in the 1950s, it was taken back out of the box and scrutinized via more modern means. First fluorine dating revealed that it was much too recent, and it was shown to have been chemically-treated to give a false impression of its age and mineral composition. Then it was finally determined that the jaw must have come from an orangutan, and that it had been deliberately reshaped with modern tools in a well-crafted and deliberate forgery.

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Homo heidelbergensis was “quite human” because he was a human, just not the same species we are. And it was never known from a single jawbone either, but from more than 4,000 bones representing nearly 30 individuals found in one site alone, and there are still dozens more. Their evident descendants, the Neanderthals weren’t “just an old man with arthritis” either. We’ve found hundreds of Neanderthal men, women, and children, and even their DNA, which has provided proof that they were not part of our species!

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One hoax cannot indicate the inferiority of conventional archeology, because creationists have several of their own, including Paluxy footprints, the Calaveras skull, [[Moab Man]] and [[Malachite Man]], and others. More telling is how people deal with these hoaxes. When Piltdown was exposed, it stopped being used as evidence. The creationist hoaxes, however, can still be found cited as if they were real. Piltdown has been over and done with for decades, but the dishonesty of creationist hoaxes continues. }}

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'''The Religion of Evolution''' Ray wonders if there is no evidence for evolution, why is it vastly treated as it does? Ray then quotes Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote the Foreward to the ''Origin of Species'', that "evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable." Finally, Ray quotes physics Prof. H. S. Lispon "In fact, evolution became a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to "bend" their observations to fit it."

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Ray agrees with Lispon that evolution is a religion. Ray explains how the acceptance of evolution happens: a believer tells it to a nonbeliever. The nonbeliever does not have to turn from sin, just drop the biblical creation, and thus believes evolution without a shred of evidence.

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{{Response|However, if evolution is a religion, then so is gravity. In all seriousness, [http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA610.html evolution is not a religion at all], and creationists knows that. Evolution as religion has even been rejected by the courts: "Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause."(The court cases ''Epperson v. Arkansas'', ''Willoughby v. Stever'', and ''Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist.'' are cited as precedent (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 1982))}}

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Ray claims that believers in evolution accept there is a missing link out there somewhere, but to this day (according to Ray we have never found the missing link.

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{{Response|This is a huge lie. The "missing link" has not remained undiscovered. Hasn’t been for a long time now. There was a missing link in 1859 when there were only two species of humans yet known in the fossil record, and no intermediate fossils to link them with any of the other apes we knew of at that time. Since then, we’ve found the fossils of thousands of individuals of dozens of hominid species, many of which provide a definite link to the other apes. But there were two particular pieces predicted to complete the puzzle:

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First, it was never supposed that we evolved from any ape species still alive today. Instead the theory held that chimpanzees and humans were sibling species, daughters of the same mother. So the first link we needed to find was an ancient ape apparently basal to either of us –to prove there was a potential progenitor of both groups. We had already found that link in Europe five years before Darwin went public. So we already had an evident “chain” of transitional species from which only one more “link” was needed.

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The theory then required that another extinct hominid be found in strata chronologically between the Miocene Dryopithecus fontana and the earliest known human species, which from 1891 to 1961, was [[Homo erectus]]. We’ve found lots of candidates, as many as fifty species of apes which are now all extinct. But more than that, the theory also demanded that we find one “half-way” between humans and other apes in terms of morphology. We found exactly that too way back in 1974! [[Australopithecus]] afarensis proved to be a fully bi-pedal ape who’s hands, feet, teeth, pelvis, skull, and other physical details were exactly what creationists challenged us to find, yet they’re still pretending we never found it.

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But worse than that, we didn’t just find that one. In 1977, three years after we discovered the no-longer-missing link in the human evolutionary lineage, Harvard paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould mentioned an “extreme rarity” of other clear transitions persistent in the fossil record until that time, and his comment, -taken out of context- remains a favorite of creationist quote-miners to this day. But in the more than 30 years since then, there has been a paleontological boom such that we now have way more transitional species in many more lineages than we ever needed or hoped for.

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Now the problem for evolution is that there are too many contenders, while a compounding problem for creationists is that not even one of them should exist if their story was true. And yet they do –by the bushelful! Despite their complaints to the contrary, the intermediate gradations in the human evolutionary line are now so fine that paleoanthropologists can’t agree whether they’re all different species or merely mildly modified varieties of the same ones, such that there are no more links needed for human evolution anymore.

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But creationists still say we’ve never found anything that was “half-ape and half-human”. Adhering always to black or white absolutes, and being thus unwilling to admit any degree of variance other than 100% or zero, they make sure to divide every find into one of two boxes even when they can’t make up their minds which side of that imaginary partition each one belongs to.

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Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans ARE apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!}}

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Ray ends this section with a brief explanation about the validity of Genesis. Ray claims that the theory of evolution came from the minds of people who do not know God and have conjured up something to explain human origins. Ray says that scientists speak "in the language of speculation"—— that is, they never speak with absolute certainty whereas the Genesis account does.

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{{Response|However, the reason for this is because science must remain falsifiable. As new data constantly comes in, theories and facts may change or be disproven. So scientists speak with caution and try at their best degree to be accurate. Simply speaking in absolute terms does not alter reality in favor of personal beliefs or wishful thinking. As already seen through the review of this book, the supposed "facts" in the Genesis account are not facts at all! For a book to speak in such absolute terms while claiming to be infallible and yet it is still demonstrably wrong.}}

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'''Never-Changing Bible, Ever-Changing Science''' Ray lists several vague news reports of scientists finding new discoveries that altered their previous views. For instance, NBC report of a discovery in Australia in August 1999 that life had originated there, but the date was a billion years earlier than scientists previously thought.

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{{Response|While this may seem as a jump, never once has science estimated the earth is anywhere close to 6,000 years old.}}

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Another report on CBS News in October 1999 that a 40 million-year-old fossil was found in Asia that changed the scientist mind of ''where'' humans had originated. It was once believed that man came from Africa, but no longer.

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{{Response|However, this is a false reporting. The prediction that humans originated from Africa still remains true.}}

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Finally, ''USA Today'' (March 21, 2001) reported, “Paleontologists have discovered a new skeleton in the closet of human ancestry that is likely to force science to revise, if not scrap, current theories of human origins.” Reuters reported that the discovery left “scientists of human evolution... confused,” saying, “Lucy may not even be a direct human ancestor after all.”

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{{Response|Nothing on the internet has revealed such a report. As for Lucy, she is and remains a direct human ancestor (along with a dozen or so discovered fossils).}}

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Ray quote Charles Spurgeon in an attempt to make the claims of scientists seem foolish and faith-based.

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<blockquote>

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“We are invited, brethren, most earnestly to go away from the old-fashioned belief of our forefathers because of the supposed discoveries of science. What is science? The method by which man tries to hide his ignorance. It should not be so, but so it is. You are not to be dogmatical in theology, my brethren, it is wicked; but for scientific men it is the correct thing. You are never to assert anything very strongly; but scientists may boldly assert what they cannot prove, and may demand a faith far more credulous than any we possess. Forsooth, you and I are to take our Bibles and shape and mould our belief according to the ever-shifting teachings of so-called scientific men. What folly is this! Why, the march of science, falsely so called, through the world may be traced by exploded fallacies and abandoned theories. Former explorers once adored are now ridiculed; the continual wreckings of false hypotheses is a matter of universal notoriety. You may tell where the supposed learned have encamped by the debris left behind of suppositions and theories as plentiful as broken bottles.”

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</blockquote>

==Chapter 13: Science and Evolution==

==Chapter 13: Science and Evolution==

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Ray tells the reader if they still think there is evidence for evolution, they should go to Ray's website (www.raycomfort.com) which links to [[Kent Hovind]]'s $250,000 prize to anyone who can prove evolution and that no one has claimed the prize.

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{{Response|Going to Ray's website will accomplish nothing accept entering a intellectual-free site, deprived of academic credentials and support, with all rationality tossed out the window.

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It is common knowledge that the so-called $250,000 prize is a scam, just like Ray's $10,000 prize for anyone to bring for a "living" transitional fossil. The prize set up by Mr. Kent Hovind is fallacious and constructed to make every entry fail on purpose. The judges of this challenge are anonymous and secret, to be hand-picked by Hovind. It is virtually inconceivable that Hovind would pick judges who are not sympathetic to his beliefs.

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James “the Amazing” Randi, a former Las Vegas illusionist well-versed in the angles used in supernatural pseduoscience -has for ten years- offered a million-dollar prize for anyone who can show testable evidence of the things we should expect would also be true if there were etherial entities influencing things with molecular structures. In that time, he has exposed a few frauds. But to date, no one has ever produced any actual evidence for faith-healing, telepaths, psionics, precognative psychic friends with astral bodies, past life remembrance, or spectral manifestations of any kind. Talismans, incantations, elemental component spells, enchantments, clairvoyance and prophesies all consistently fail every test.

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The evidence for evolution is mind-blowing, that all can be observed, documented, tested and proven both in nature and in the lab. ERVs, atavisms, transitional forms, physiological, anatomical, and molecular vestiges, ontogeny and developmental biology, protein functional redundancy, convergent phenotypes, mobile genes, observed speciation, or the myriad methods of dating geologic stratigraphy, nor any twin-nested hierarchy of phylogenetic clades. All of these are peer-reviewed and verified accurate evidence positively promoting evolution as well as directly disproving creationism. But you know what we’ve never seen? We’ve never seen anything “created”. No one has ever seen a complex life-form (or anything else) magically pop out of thin air. But that’s what creationists like Ray Comfort are arguing for!}}

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Ray then claims evolution is a religion. While using ''Funk & Wagnull'' dictionary, which defines religion as "a set of beliefs that concerned with explaining the origins and purposes of the universe." Ray says that scientist even speak in a language of religion: we believe, perhaps, maybe, probably, could've, possibly. Ray says Charles Darwin is the founder of the faith and it's god is "nature" (often referred to as 'Mother Nature').

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{{Response|Here, Ray is just spewing utter nonsense. The definition brought forth is very vague, and leaves out certain things like sacred texts, holidays, rituals, and such.

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The so-called "language of speculation" is actually the language of '''honesty and humbleness'''. Science never claims to be 100% sure all the time, everything in science must be falsifiable - which means future uncovering data could completely prove it incorrect. Science is progressive and pushes knowledge forward, which is why that anyone making certain claims that is not completely understood should be sure not to make an incorrect statement. But if you believe in truth at all, then you should make sure that the things you say actually are true, that they are defensibly accurate, and academically correct. And if they’re not correct, you should correct them! You wouldn’t claim to know anything you couldn’t prove that you knew, and you wouldn’t talk about anything being “proven” at all, unless you’re clearly using that term in the sense that a court of law would use. Scientists must choose their words very carefully, because science is brutal in peer-review, and no scientist would ever get away with any of the wild raving propaganda which religious zealots or the news media use. That’s why they say the devil is in the details!

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First of all, “truth” is more than just facts. It implies something that is completely true, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So every word of it better be accurate, or it isn’t truth at all; and depending on the topic, such a concept is likely beyond human comprehension anyway. Truth may be pursued but never possessed. That’s why we should trust those who seek the truth and doubt those who claim to have it! A fact is a unit of information that is verifiably true beyond dispute, and obviously beliefs based on the conflicting faiths of different religions cannot qualify as that.

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Finally, [[Charles Darwin]] did not invent a new faith of any type. Evolution is a fact based on mountains of evidence collected for more than 150 years - all constantly proving evolution to be true every time. Evolution does not comment on the "origins and purpose of the universe" at all. All evolution does is explain the diversity we see in life, it does not say how life started or its purpose. Nor does evolution exclude the possibility of God, many scientists accept God and the Bible.}}

Content

Foreword

The first line of the foreword: I hope you are skeptical.
Ray begins by dodging questions by demanding definitions for certain words.

Ray reminds readers that history has shown science wrong several times and what we know now may be laughed at in a hundred years.

Ray recalls his debate with a member from American Atheists. When Comfort mentioned that medical facts existed in the Bible a hundred years before they were discovered, the audience laughed at him. Ray thinks if the medical facts were accurate, then that provides proof the Bible is supernatural in origin. However, he does not check to see if these medical facts were discovered before the authors wrote about it.

Comfort says the Bible does not defend itself. Later, he says that other religions (Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists) have certain prophecies, but according to Ray none of them have been proven, nor do their sacred books contain scientific knowledge (in fact they contain things that are clearly unscientific). This is true, but the same is true for Christianity. Christianity is unscientific by the sheer fact that it says a supernatural being created the earth magically.

Before moving on, Ray tries to provide an argument in which he must use the Bible (he says this is not circular reasoning -sorry Ray, using the Bible to prove the Bible is circular).

Ray asks if the reader believes in some of the stories in the Bible. Comfort says if you are an atheist, of course you dont because God "has chosen foolish, weak, base, and despised things of the world to confound those who think they are wise."

Where is the evidence?

Instead of actually presenting proof, Ray uses an analogy. Imagine you are looking at a luxury liner moving through calm waters, and suddenly some people jump off the boat onto small life boats. The rest, including yourself, calls them foolish. Until suddenly the luxury boat sinks, then you see the fools who jumped off earlier were wise, and those who wise who stayed on were fools. Ray urges the readers to consider the proof of Christianity provided in this book.

Chapter 1: Science and the Bible

The Bible and Earth's Free-Float in Space Job 26:7 while the common belief of the time (1500 B.C.E.) was the earth sat on the back of a large animal or giant.

Response: This is due to a simple observation of the stars moving around the pole star due to the earth spinning. Anyone who watches the stars on a clear night notices this. This has been known since Antiquity.

The earth is held in orbit by gravity and angular momentum. The earth does not hang upon nothing. To define nothing is to say not real or non-existent but beneath the earth (and all around it) we find empty space, cosmic dust, stars, etc. Job 38:4-6 refers to earth having a foundation and footings, in direct contradiction to the idea that it is unsupported. Job 26:11 says heaven is supported by pillars. Many verses throughout the Bible refer to a solid firmament.

The Scriptures speak of Invisible Structure Hebrews 11:3. Science has recently discovered the universe is made of atoms, whereas scripture knew of this for 2,000 years.

Response: The ancient Greeks were already discussing the natural structure of the universe, for a long time the common belief was the universe was made of four elements. If the Bible were in any way scientific, this verse would obviously not begin "by faith" but "by observation"

The Bible Reveals the Earth is Round Isaiah 40:22. The verse says the earth is a circle. Ray says the word chuwg translates to "circuit" or "compass" indicating a spherical not flat.

Response: Comfort says Isaiah was written between 740 and 680 B.C.E. and at least 300 years before Aristotle's book On the Heavens. However, Isiah and the Bible does not support a round earth.[1] Isaiah 11:12 refers to the "four quarters of the earth." A "Compass" is indeed flat, with an arrow connected to the disk. Daniel 4:20 says "The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth..." No matter how tall that tree is, there's no way it could be seen to the “ends of the Earth” on a spherical body!

The Bible and the Science of Oceanography Psalm 8:8. Ray tells a story about Matthew Maury (1806 - 1873) is considered the father of oceanography and discovered many things after reading this Bible verse. Ray says the following "What does the Bible mean by “paths” of the seas? The sea is just a huge mass of water, how then could it have “paths?” Man discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850’s, but the Bible declared the science of oceanography 2,800 years ago."

Response: First of all, lets address this part "Man discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850’s" Discovered the existence of ocean currents!?!? ANYBODY who has gone to the beach knows what an ocean current is, even the Neanderthal man could figure it out. Any sailor or trader going back thousands of years ago in ancient times knew the existence of ocean currents.

Maury was nowhere near the first to discover or write about currents; however, he was the first to unify all of these together into scientific writings and did make a lot of progress in the field. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon described the gulf stream. Benjamin Franklin produced a detailed map of the gulf stream in 1769 (37 years before Maury was born). Even though Maury may have produced many maps of ocean currents, it is clear that the currents' existence was known well before his time and it is highly unlikely Maury would not have been aware of it. Maury may have been inspired by Psalms to look for more currents, but that is hardly the same as discovering a new phenomenon based on Scripture.

The Bible and Radio Waves Job 38:35. Ray says this verse tells that light can be sent and manifest itself in speech. He says that all electromagnetic radiation (from x-rays to radio waves) travel at the speed of light. Comfort sites James Clerk Maxwell in Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia 1864 (3,300 years later) who discovered that electricity and light waves were the same thing.

Response: Job 38:19 says "Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?" Notice they conveniently forget to mention that light is also mentioned as dwelling, or staying in one place. Also, they ignore the fact that the bible treats darkness like it actually exists, when really it's the absence of light. Also, it's Job, which, once again, is a very poetic part of the bible. They also ignore Job 38:20: "That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?" Light and darkness do not have "bounds" or as the NIV translates it, places and dwellings (at least not one specific one).

The Bible and Entropy Isaiah 51:6, Psalm 102:25, 26 and Hebrews 1:11 indicate the earth is wearing out, and concludes this is about the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the law of Increase Entropy) and defines it as: that in all physical process, every ordered system over time tends to become more disordered.

Response: This is false. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing that everything leads to disorder. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order.

The Bible and the Water Cycle Ecclesiastes 1:7.

Response: He also points out Ecclesiastes 1:3 and Amos 9:6, but he does not point out Job 38:22, for example, which says that snow and hail are kept in storehouses. Genesis 2:5-6 contradicts the water cycle. Ecclesiastes 1:7 does not describe the water cycle. It merely says that water returns to the source of streams; it does not say how.

The Bible and the First Law of Thermodynamics Genesis 2:1 Ray says "The Hebrew word used here is the past definite tense for the verb “finished,” indicating an action
completed in the past, never again to occur. The creation was “finished”— once and for all. That is what the First Law of Thermodynamics says. It states that neither matter nor energy can be either created or destroyed. There is no “creation” ongoing today. It is “finished” exactly as the Bible states."

Response: Once again, we have to ask: "If this knowledge is so clear cut, why did no Christians make these predictions BEFORE the laws of thermodynamics were established?" Secondly, the idea of God creating matter is a direct violation of that same law. Energy and matter are coming from nowhere.

The Bible and Ship Dimensions Comfort uses Genesis 6 to support this, that God gave Noah the dimensions (30:5:3) that was later used in 1609 at Hoorn in Holland and then massively used in the 1900s. Comforts source is "Llyod's Register of Shipping" in the World Almanac.

Response: People have been building ships for thousands of years and boats for tens of thousands of years, so it's not unreasonable to assume they figured out the best ways to do so themselves, without having to be told by God. Also, the ideal length-to-width ratio of a ship depends on the purpose of the ship. Sailing vessels are typically built with a larger ratio; war ships have a small ratio to attain the required speed; bulk carriers are built with a large ratio because load capacity is more important than speed (the cargo does not depreciate during the voyage). Even in Biblical times this would have applied: ancient warships (rowed, fast) were built slimmer than cargo ships (sailed, large loading capacity).

The Bible and Meteorological Laws Ray tries to defend the air cycles in Ecclesiastes 1:6.

Response: First of all, Ecclesiastes is all about how nothing matters and nothing changes. So it poetically refers to the wind as not really changing no matter what it does, or where it blows. Secondly, Ecclesiastes 1:5 shows a geocentric world view: "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." We now know that the sun does not actually rise, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear that way. So why couldn't God predict that?

The Bible and Science Ray include a quote from Richard Wurmbrand, Proof's of God's existence, that science confirms what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years. he says the Christians hold the key to the secrets of the universe, and they should be the owners of the lock and key )that is show there is no conflict between science ad religion).

Response: However, as we have reviewed, none of the above "proofs" presented are not extraordinary or cannot be obtain with simple observation. With a bit of literacy analysis, it is easy to make a book of fables look as you want it, but if the Bible was truly a source of scientific knowledge and science confirms what is in it, then we would expect Christians to point out in their Bible several breakthroughs in physics, medicine, chemistry, etc. that are unknown to modern science. However, we do not see this. Instead, we have science making discoveries and Christians trying to create an illusion that the Bible already knew of it. Muslim do the exact same thing, such as point out the Qur'an accurately predicted the Big Bang, speed of light, reproductive systems, plat tectonics, and such but their claims are no more credible then Christians.

Chapter 2: The Incredible Book of Job

Chapter 3: Medical Science and the Bible

The Bible and the laws of Hygiene Here, Ray tries to portray Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis as the founder of the laws of hygiene and that the Bible led him to his discoveries. Ray says that Semmelweies was horrified at the terrible death rate of women who gave birth in hospitals. As many as 30 percent died after child birth. Semmelweis noted that doctors would examine the bodies of patients who died, then, without washing their hands, go straight to the next ward and examine expectant mothers. This was their normal practice, because the presence of microscopic diseases was unknown. Semmelweis insisted that doctors wash their hands before each examination, and the death rate immediately dropped to two percent. Ray tells us to "Look at the specific instructions that God gave thousands of years ago to His people for when they encountered disease: "And when he that has an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean" (Leviticus 15:13). Until recent years, doctors washed their hands in a bowl of water, leaving invisible germs on their hands. However, the Bible says specifically to wash under "running water.""

Response: Keep reading down Leviticus 15, it explains how to finish this sterilization process. "...and bathe his flesh in running water,and he shall be clean. On the eighth day, he shall take to turtledoves, or two pigeons, and come before the Lord unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and give them unto the priest, and the priest shall offer them, one for suffering, one for burnt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord for his issue." Semmelweis did not make his discoveries based on the Bible, because washing your hands prior to chopping up dead burnt pigeons to appease some desert god is more voodoo than medicine.

Chapter 4: Science and Genesis

Scientists Admit Genesis is "Close to the Truth." Ray quotes several magazines. First one is Time from December 1976, "Most cosmologists agree that the Genesis account of creation, in imagining an initial void, may be uncannily closer to the truth." Next from Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal, "The universe suddenly exploded into being...The big bang bears an uncanny resemblance to the Genesis command." Finally, Ray quotes from U.S. News and World Report, March 31, 1997, "New scientific revelations about supernovas, black holes, quarks, and the big bang even suggest to some scientists that there is a 'grand design' to the universe."

The Bible Speaks of Specific Design Ray quotes from two more magazines. First from Readers Digest, September 1986, by John Wheeler (Princeton University prof. of physics), "Slight variations in physical laws such as gravity or electromagnetism would make life impossible...The necessity to produce life lies at the center of the universe's whole machinery and design."

Next quote from evolutionist Stephen Hawking, "the universe and the law of physics seem to have been specifically deigned for us. If any of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as w know if would not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they would not combine into molecules, or the stars would no form the heavier elements, of the universe would collapse before life could develop itself, and so on..." (Source: Austin American Statesman, October 19, 1997).

The Bible Speaks of One Common Ancestor Here, Ray takes a quote from U.S. News and World Report Dec. 14, 1995 of a scientific terminology that 99 of all scientists agree that all humans are alike because they descend from common ancestor, traced back to one male ancestor they dubbed "Y-chromosome Adam."

Chapter 5: Scientists and the Bible

Ray starts off this chapter with a piece from young earth creationist Henry M. Morris. Morris outright claims the following: "Many of the great scientists of the past who founded and developed key principles of sciences were creationists."

Here are the names Morris provides;

Physics: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin

Chemistry: Boyle, Dalton, Ramsay

Biology: Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur

Geology: Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Agassiz

Astronomy: Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Maunder

Morris is quick to point out that it was the Catholic Church who persecuted Galileo, NOT the Christian Church.

Response: Basically, Morris and Ray Comfort are trying to rewrite history. There is a creeping new delusion among conservative Christians that Christianity invented science. As Morris puts it, the above men "founded and developed key principles" - bear in mind the "founded" part. Where these men responsible for biology, chemistry, biology, geology and astronomy? The answer is simply NO.

These scientific fields were founded and developed long before Christianity ever existed, all the way back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and such (in an age where virtually everyone were polytheistic pagans). For instance, biology goes back (perhaps further) to Aristotle, who studied and dissected animals and classified animals into categories. The Greek scientist, Anaximander had already proposed that modern forms of life, -including humans- had evolved from simpler forms. Ancient scientists developed the study of astronomy. Aristarchus began measuring the distances of the moon, sun and planets, and proposed the first heliocentric theory. In Rhodes, Hipparchus discovered and measured celestial precession, observed the first supernova, established the first detailed scientific star charts, made numerous advances in planetary theory, and developed the first scientific system for predicting lunar and solar eclipses. This is just to name a few. While the scientists mentioned by Morris are significant, their developments in advancing scientific principles rest on the discoveries of earlier great scientists.

Chapter 6: Biology and the Bible

The Bible and Plant Life
Ray points out that plants need sunlight, water, soil and minerals to survive. He states the Bible reveals this truth when in Genesis 1:3 and onward shows that God first created light, then water, then soil, and finally created plants.

Response: Here is what is left out; plants need light for photosynthesis. For that, they need sunlight. But Genesis says plants were created AFTER the sun, which would make it impossible for plants to survive.

So what is this "light" mentioned? Nobody knows. Genesis says these events took place on separate days, but what are days? Days are measured by earth's time, which is based on the earth's orbit around the sun. So how can there be "days" before there is a sun? For that matter, how can there be light without a light source, like suns and stars. Genesis the sun is a source of light of the day, but it also says the moon produces its own too! Well, we know this is obviously not true either.

Also, how was the earth a planet before soil came into the picture? Was is a giant ball of liquid, and then suddenly dirt manifested inside it and grew? This is ridiculous.

Bible Statements Consistent with Biology
Ray argues that Leviticus 17:11, written in 1400 BCE, shows that blood is the source of life. He declares up until 120 years ago, doctors performed a "blood test" in which they would bleed out their patients to help discover what was wrong with them.

Response: The view of blood as the essence for life predates the Bible. The Code of Hammurabi from Mesopotamia (about 1727 B.C.E., before Leviticus was written) has a phrase which translates, "to pour out his life-blood like water." In the Enuma Elish, blood was an essential ingredient which mankind was created from. Ugaritic and Egyptian sources also note the importance of blood. That blood is essential to life is not hard to figure out, especially to people who slaughter livestock.

Finally, hypothetically, if we had two patients, and we took all the blood from one of them, he would surely die. Christians like Ray would point to this and say "AHA! See, blood IS the essence of life." Hold on, now we move to the second patient, and without removing the blood, instead we remove the brain. The patient dies as expected. By the Christians logic, the brain is the essence of life. Rather, this is not true either, but the point is is that blood is not the essence of life.

Ray says that "William Harvey discovered that blood circulation is the key factor to physical life - confirming what the Bible said 3,000 years earlier" (emphasis added).

Response:WRONG WRONG WRONG William Harvey did not "discover" blood circulation is the key factor to physical life - even if he did he is still wrong. First of all, pagan scientists have known for centuries that the heart was the mechanism for pumping blood, but also a vital key for life.

Now, is blood the key factor to physical life? Absolutely not. There are dozens of species today that are alive without blood or a circulatory system. For instance, the jellyfish does not have blood, neither do sponges. Also, plants are living beings too, but they do not have hearts or blood.

The Bible and Biogenesis
Ray points to all the times when genesis mentions that animals produce after "their own kind" and concludes that this shows that only life begats life.

Response: Without the need to explain what the term "kind" means, any biologist will explain that life can appear naturally.

Natural Kinds validate the Bible
Ray quotes Stephen J. Gould that "natural kinds" fits perfectly with pre-Darwinian tenets of creationism. It also Louis Agassiz believed that species are God's individual thoughts made incarnate.

Chapter 7: The Bible's 100% Accurate Prophecies

Ray argues the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible testify to its truth and validity, such as the bible predicted empires like Greece and Rome would fall in Daniel 2:39,40 and the destruction of Tyre and Sidon in Isaiah 23.

Response: None of these prophecies are significant or convincing. There are several mundane ways in which a prediction of the future can be fulfilled:

Retrodiction. The "prophecy" can be written or modified after the events fulfilling it have already occurred.

Vagueness. The prophecy can be worded in such a way that people can interpret any outcome as a fulfillment. Nostradomus's prophecies are all of this type. Vagueness works particularly well when people are religiously motivated to believe the prophecies.

Inevitability. The prophecy can predict something that is almost sure to happen, such as the collapse of a city. Since nothing lasts forever, the city is sure to fall someday. If it has not, it can be said that according to prophecy, it will.

Denial. One can claim that the fulfilling events occurred even if they have not. Or, more commonly, one can forget that the prophecy was ever made.

Self-fulfillment. A person can act deliberately to satisfy a known prophecy.

There are no prophecies in the Bible that cannot easily fit into one or more of those categories. The prophecies from Daniel were written after the event took place, but it is inevitable that civilizations arise and fall. Finally, Ray is pleased to present that Isaiah 23 was fulfilled when Alexander t Great conquered it. The sad thing is Ezekiel 26 predicts that Nebudchadnezzar would destroy Tyre and make it "as a bare rock". Best of all, biblical scholars are in agreement that this book was written hundreds of years before Tyre was destroyed. Yet we know from history that it was Alexander the Great, not Nebudchadnezzar, who destroyed Tyre.

The Bible's Prediction of the Middle-East Conflict Ray says that in Genesis 16:12 that the descendants of Ishmael are the Arabs, and the Bible say the descendants will be will men an every man would be against them while they [the Arabs] dwell in the midst of their "brethren." Ray says the Jews are the Arab's brethren.

The Bible's Messianic Prophecies Ray quotes Micah 5:2 (born in Bethlehem), Isaiah 7:14 (born of a virgin), Zechariah 11:12,13 (betrayed for 30 pieces of silver), Psalm 22 (die of crucifixion), and Isaiah 53:9 (buried in a rich man's tomb). Let's go in order,

Response: The gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:5-6) claims that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem fulfils this prophecy. But this is unlikely for two reasons.

"Bethlehem Ephratah" in Micah 5:2 refers not to a town, but to a clan: the clan of Bethlehem, who was the son of Caleb’s second wife, Ephrathah (1 Chronicles 2:18, 2:50-52 & 4:4).

The prophecy (if that is what it is) does not refer to the Messiah, but rather to a military leader, as can be seen from Micah 5:6. This leader is supposed to defeat the Assyrians, which, of course, Jesus never did. It should also be noted that Matthew altered the text of Micah 5:2 by saying: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah" rather than "Bethlehem Ephratah" as is said in Micah 5:2. He did this, intentionally no doubt, to make this verse appear to refer to the town of Bethlehem rather than the family clan.

Response: Isaiah 7:14. Isiah 7:14 does not say "virgin." The Hebrew word used is almah which means "young woman." Almah does not mean virgin, virgins are called out specifically (the word is bethula). Some have argued that almah may mean virgin, but this is not the case. Almah is used about nine different times in the old Testament, each one not referring to a virgin.

Response: Zechariah 11. Matthew says Jesus fulfilled the prophecy in Jeremiah, but Jeremiah has no verse that is even similar to the words given in Matthew. Matthew confused Jeremiah with Zechariah.
Zechariah 11:12-13 –“So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.” To make things worse, Zechariah is predicting about a false prophet.

Response: Psalm 22:16. Fundamentalists have always claimed that the latter part of Psalm 22:16 "They pierced my hands and my feet" (which we shall designate as Psalm 22:16b) is a direct prophecy of the crucifixion; with the "piercing" referring to the nails going through Jesus' hands and feet. Although this is not the reading found in the Hebrew Masoretic text, support is claimed from the readings found in a Dead Sea Scroll fragment and in ancient versions of the Bible such as the Septuagint and the Vulgate.
This claim is false, for a few reasons:
The Hebrew Text Behind the King James Version
Despite the claims of its accurate rendition of the original text, the Hebrew equivalent for "they pierced" was not found in the manuscripts available to the translators of the King James Version. Indeed the word rendered in those manuscripts means "like a lion".
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, is ambiguous at best. The word found there, kaaru, has no known meaning and may actually be meaningless.
Ancient Versions
A) Before looking at the readings of the ancient versions, it is important to know some preliminary background information about them first.
B) A careful analysis of the readings given in the ancient versions does not support "they pierced" as the correct translation. Indeed the analysis shows that there were two extant readings in the Hebrew text, one being kaari (like a lion) and the other kaaru. The very fact that translators did not translate the latter word consistently showed that even by that time, the meaning of that word was no longer known.
Use of Psalm 22:16b by the Early Christians
No early Christian writer, including the evangelists and Paul, until the time of Justin around the middle of the second century CE, made any explicit reference to the word "piercing" in Psalm 22:16b in relation to the crucifixion of Jesus although there were ample opportunities to do so.
A consideration of the various internal evidence favors "like a lion" as the correct rendering of the word found in Psalm 22:16b.
We can conclude with certainty that there is no reference to the crucifixion in Psalm 22:16b and with some probability that the correct reading there remains "like a lion".

The Bible Predicted the Birth of a Nation Ray argues that Isaiah 66:7,8 predicted the foundation of Israel.

Bare in mind, the Bible contains many failed prophecies, such as Isaiah 19:5 predicting that the Nile River would dry up (it never has).

Chapter 8: Astronomy and the Bible

The Bible and Lights Here, Ray uses Genesis 1:14, that says God created the "lights" in the heavens "for signs, for seasons, for days and for years." Next, he explains astronomy has calculated the length of a year, a month, and when seasons should occur. Ray says it can only be divine revelation that Moses 3,500 years ago could know that "lights" were determining factors of year's length.

The Bible and the Stars Jeremiah 33:22. Ray says this was written 2,500 years ago "when no one knew who cast the stars were, since only 1,100 of them were visible." Ray says we now know that there are billions of stars, but they cannot be numbered. Ray also says 1 Corinthians 15;41 tells us that each star is unique. Close inspection shows a difference in of light spectra.

The Bible and Outer Space Ray argues before the Hubble telescope, the Bible in Deuteronomy 10:14 talked about 'the heavens' and 'the highest heavens.' Ray says we now know how vat the universe is, which galaxies very far away.

The Bible and the Sun's Circuit Ray uses Psalm 19:6. Ray notes many people criticized this verse that it supported geocentrism. Ray says that scientists at the time (~800 BCE) thought the sun was stationary. Now, science tells us that the sun moves at great speeds. Ray argues the "circuit" in the bible verse supports this.

The Bible and the Revolving Earth Ray argues that Jesus Christ will come back (faster than the speed of light -Luke 17:24) while some are asleep at night and others awake during their daytime activities. Ray concludes this must mean that the bible knew the earth revolved, since day and night existed on earth at the same time. Ray also argues that science did not discover this until the 15th century.

The Bible and the Expanding Universe Ray says that the Bible mentions about seven times that God "stretches out the heavens like a curtain" but he only notes Psalm 104:2. Ray says only recently is science understanding that the universe is expanding.

Astronomy Confirms the Bible In 1964, Drs. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs discovered a noise coming from all directions, permeating the universe. This was hailed by physicists as "the radio echo of creation." Penzias said that the best data to go by, if he had nothing else to go on, are the five books of Moses. He also said that "the creation of the universe is supported by all the observable data astronomy has produced so far."

Chapter 9: Historical Figures and the Bible

Sir Isaac Newton Believed the Bible Ray calls Newton the father of modern science. Ray then quotes Newton claiming that he found the Bible more historically authentic than any other.

Samuel Morse Believed the Bible Morse created the telegraph, who claimed four years before his death that the closer he approached death he saw the divine origin in the Bible.

Napoleon Believed the Bible Ray provides a quote from Napoleon who finds the Bible very enjoyable and reads it daily.

Woodrow Wilson Believed the Bible

Thomas Jefferson Believed the Bible

Herbert Hoover Believed the Bible

John Quincy Adams Believed the Bible

Franklin D. Roosevelt Believed the Bible

Robert E. Lee Believed the Bible remember, Lee was the General for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War.

Ulysses S. Grant Believed the Bible

Sir Winston Churchill Believed the Bible

Charles Dickens Believed the Bible

John Adams Believed the Bible "The Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more than all the libraries I have ever seen."

Ronald Reagen Believed the Bible

George Washington Believed the Bible

Dwight Eisenhower Believed the Bible

Albert Schweitzer Believed the Bible

Calvin Coolidge Believed the Bible

Christopher Columbus Believed the Bible

Here are some important historical figures who also believed the Bible, but Ray choose not to share,

Hitler.

The Nazi party.

The Ku Klux Klan.

George W. Bush.

Dick Cheney.

Popes.

Fred Phelps, head of the Westboro Baptist Church, who believe the dead soldiers are god's punishment on American for its support of homosexuality.

Henrich Kramer & James Sprenger, authors of the Malleus Maleficarum.

Vlad the Impaler.

Ivan the Terrible.

Hernán Cortés and many other conquistadors.

Kamini Debbarma of the NLFT, a Christian terrorist group in India.

David Koresh, leader of the Branch Dividians, many who died in a shoot out with local and federal law enforcement officers.

Jim Jones, leader of the People' Temple and initiator of the mass suicide of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana.

Chapter 10: Archaeology and the Bible

Archaeology and History Attest to the Bible The first section of this chapter was written by Richard Fales, PhD, who has been described as a professor of Archaeology, Greek, and Apologetics at the unaccredited, and apparently now defunct, Pacific International University.

The section does make a valid point that the gap of a few decades between the events in the New Testament and when they were written down is relatively short in comparison to other works.

Response: However, Fales misdates the oldest manuscripts by upwards of half a century and the continues with the demonstrably false claim that "it can be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the New Testament says exactly the same thing today as it originally did nearly 2,000 years ago." Fales also ignores the fact that all of the oldest manuscripts are fragments, typically smaller than a credit card and the first complete book of the New Testament was written no earlier than 200 CE. [3]

Next Fales sets up the strawman that critics claim "there are no ancient writings about Jesus outside the New Testament". While he does list a number of extra-biblical sources that refer to Jesus or simply to Christians, Fales falsely claims that these other sources confirm Jesus' "birth, ministry, death and resurrection". This is followed by an extremely vague and extremely short history of the biblical canon. Fales claims that "Each document, being accepted as it was penned in the first century, was then passed on to Christians of the next century," obviously ignoring the "documents" written by Christians in the first century that didn't make it into the canon.

The Dead See Scrolls Bear Out the Bible This section is written by archaeologist and biblical scholar William F Albright, who received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University[4].

Response: Despite the relatively harmless claims, Albright has been highly criticized with comments like "historical interpretation can make no claim to be objective, proceeding as it does from a methodology which distorts its data by selectivity which is hardly representative".[5] In short, this section only serves to demonstrate that what we currently have in the Old Testament is likely to be the same as what was present 3000 years ago.

The following sections contains several quotes from people of varying levels of authority. These quotes and the examples provided demonstrate that the Old Testament is historical accurate only at the level Ben Hur and Cleopatra are. Although, some of the characters and a few events are considered truly historical, neither the movies nor Comforts description go beyond that. For example, Comfort points out the bible mentions the Hittite Empire and Ponitius Pilate, which archaeological evidence also show existed. Comfort naturally avoids mentioning the fact that both of these are attested to by many, many other sources.

Chapter 11: The Bible's Historical Accuracy

The Bible's Historical Accuracy This a quote from apologist John McRay, who, as in other places is quoting in praise of Luke being a "scrupulously accurate historian."

Response: While ignoring the contradictions in Lukes account to other Gospels writers and other contemporary historians, McRay mentions Luke's claim to fame as being "references to thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities and nine islands, finding not a single mistake." So McRay (although with a number of other people) believe that being able to accurately record the places one visits makes them an historian.

History Attests to Scripture In this section, Comfort maintains the Bible is historical accurate because both Matthew and Luke refer to the the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

Response: It is no wonder that Comfort ignores the fact that most critical scholars, including the late Raymond Brown, a catholic priest, date both of these Gospels to after the destruction of the temple.(Brown, Raymond E. (1997). Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Anchor Bible. pp. 226. ISBN 0-385-24767-2.) It should be no surprise that they would have gotten it right.

Historian Attests to the Account of Jesus This is a full quote of Josephus' reference to Jesus in his "The Wars of the Jews".

Response: However, Comfort fails to mention that most scholars believe the statement "He was the Christ" is a later Christian addition. Note some scholars believe the original was "He was called the Christ", indicating this is what people claim and not necessarily what Josephus believed.

The paragraph is absent from early copies of the works of Josephus. For example, it does not appear in Origen’s second century version of Josephus, in Origen Contra Celsum, where Origen fiercely defended Christianity against the heretical views of Celsus. Origen quoted freely from Josephus to prove his points, but never once used this paragraph, which would have been the ultimate ace up his sleeve. In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear at all until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine. Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the emperor, was instrumental in crystallizing and defining the version of Christianity that was to become orthodox, and he is the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus. Eusebius once wrote that it was permissible "medicine" for historians to create fictions — prompting historian Jacob Burckhardt to call Eusebius “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.”

The fact that the Josephus-Jesus paragraph shows up at this point in history—at a time when interpolations and revisions were quite common and when the emperor was eager to demolish Gnostic Christianity and replace it with literalistic Christianity—makes the passage quite dubious. Many scholars believe the Eusebius was the forger and the interpolater of the paragraph on Jesus that magically appears in the works of Josephus after more than two centuries.

Josephus would not have called Jesus “the Christ” or “the truth.” Whoever wrote these phrases was a believing Christian. Josephus was a messianic Jew, and if he truly believed Jesus was the long-awaited messiah (Christ), he certainly would have given more than a passing reference to him. Josephus never converted to Christianity. Origen reported that Josephus was “not believing in Jesus as Christ.”

The passage is out of context. Book 18 (“Containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon”) starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 C.E. and talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, to which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus. He discussed Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on. Chapter 3 starts with sedition against Pilate, who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem. The Jews protested. Pilate sent spies into Jewish ranks with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then in the middle of all these troubles comes the curiously quiet paragraph about Jesus, followed immediately by: “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...” Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be “another terrible misfortune.” If he truly thought Jesus was “the Christ,” this would have been a glorious story of victory. It is only a Christian (someone like Eusebius) who might have considered Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy. Paragraph three can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter. In fact, it flows better without it. The phrase “to this day” shows that this is a later interpolation. There was no “tribe of Christians” during Josephus’ time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

Josephus appears not to know anything else about the Jesus outside of this tiny paragraph and an indirect reference concerning James, the “brother of Jesus” (see below). He does not refer to the gospels now known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or to the writing or activities of Paul, though if these stories were in circulation at that time he ought to have known about them and used them as sources. Like the writings of Paul, Josephus’ account is silent about the teachings or miracle of Jesus, although he reports the antics of other prophets in great detail. He makes no mention of the earthquake or eclipse at the crucifixion, which would have been universally known in that area if they had truly happened. He adds nothing to the Gospels narratives, and says nothing that would not have been believed by Christians already, whether in the first or fourth century. In all of Josephus’ voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere outside of this tiny paragraph. He relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus. He lists the activities of many other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the magician and the Egyptian Jew Messiah, but is mute about the life of one whom he claims (if he wrote it) is the answer to his messianic hopes.

The paragraph mentions that the “divine prophets” foretold the life of Jesus, but Josephus neglects to mention who these prophets were or what they said. In no other place does Josephus connect any Hebrew prediction with the life of Jesus. If Jesus truly had been the fulfillment of divine prophecy, as Christians believe (and Josephus was made to say), he would have been the one learned enough to document it.

The hyperbolic language of the paragraph is uncharacteristic of a careful historian: “... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him ...” This sounds more like sectarian propaganda — in other words, more like the New Testament — than objective reporting. It is very unlike Josephus.

The Bible's Harmony Attest to Its Inspiration As the title indicates, in this section Comfort claims that the consistency allegedly maintained throughout the Bible is proof of its divine inspirations.

Response: Comfort obviously fails to mention all of the inconsistencies and errors that need to be often addressed by various authors with typically different explanations.

Chapter 12: Evolution and the Bible

Comfort begins this chapter with "If you have read through this book with an open mind, you may be wondering how the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible. The answer is they are not."

Response: This coming from a person who has no interest in honestly learning about evolution, and calls his own biases "honest." For instance, Ray's book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think, in the conclusion Ray talks about the four major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity). Ray then goes through them to asses them to decide which one people should choose. Ray assess them with the preconception that Christianity is true. Ray faults Buddhism for not solving the "problem of sin and the reality of Hell." Ray faults Hinduism for not solving the problem proposed in Christianity. This bias and presupposition has been made clear to Ray, but yet he still believes he never had a presupposition and was being totally honest.

As for evolution and the Bible being compatible, that really depends of the individuals perception of faith. Billions of Christians accept evolution as true, even numerous Popes have stated that the theory of evolution and Christianity are not incompatible. However, to Ray (a Bible literalist) if evolution is true then the Bible must be false. To save much trouble, evolution is true (that is a fact), but Ray will never accept that and would rather live a life of fantasy and delusion rather than accept an observable reality.

Ray's reasons for why the Bible is true is because the Bible states that every animal brings forth after it's own "kind" but he does not define what kind means. What separates man from the other animals? The Bible says that the "flesh" of man is different from the "flesh" of beasts. This is blatantly not true. Humans are a species of primate, which is a category of mammal, which is a category of vertebrate, which is a category of animal. This was known more than 2000 years ago.

Ray says he accepts "microevolution" as he terms it "variations within a species." Ray states the following, "But there is no scientific evidence for "macroevolution"——one species evolving into another."

Response: This last statement is far from true [6]. We have observed and documented hundreds of instances when species evolve into new species. Ray says the claim that man evolved from primates is an example of macroevolution, however it is actually microevolution. Man is a primate right now.

Philosophy Professor Convinced In this section, Ray tries to convince the reader that belief in the Bible is justifiable because of a man named Prince Derek, a philosophy professor at Cambridge university, found the Bible more reliable than any other "alternative."

Response: This is a fallacy known as appeal to authority. What does he mean by "alternative"? Alternative faith? Alternative philosophy? And Prince Derek's field, according to Ray, is in philosophy, not science. But the same exact argument can be shown in hundreds of universities were professors lose their faith left and right.

Evolution: Fact or Fiction? Ray says that evolution provides more questions than answers.

Response: This is not an accurate statement, but it is good that questions exist in science. Science is always looking for new questions to answer.

The reason why evolution seems illogical is because Ray does not know the answer to such questions like the first bird. Here are his questions,

Did the bird breathe? Did it breathe before it evolved lungs? How did it do this? Why did it evolve lungs if it was happy surviving without them? How did it know that it needed to be evolved if its brain hadn't been evolved yet? Did the bird have a mouth? How did it eat before it evolved a mouth? Where did the mouth send the food before the stomach evolved? How did the bird have energy if it didn't eat (because it didn't yet have a mouth)? How did the bird see what there was to eat before its eyes evolved? Evolution is intellectual suicide. It is an embarrassment.

Response: Reading the above questions is an intellectual embarrassment. Is anything like this similar to how Darwin described it? Has any evolutionary scientist ever described it like this? Does Ray think that evolutionary scientists claim that birds were once eyeless, mouthless, and lacked certain internal organs?

Ray then goes on to quote several people. He first quotes Prof. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center for Scientific Research, "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."

Response: However, Ray and other creationists have taken this quote out of context. This quote comes from 1984, but it did not come from Bounoure. "Evolution is a fairy tale for adults" is not from Bounoure but from Jean Rostand (way back in 1959), who did not even say "Evolution" but "transformation." Rostand DDI say the following: "Transformism may be considered as accepted, and no scientist, no philosopher, no longer discusses [questions - ED.] the fact of evolution." Rostand was an atheist, and he clearly defended evolution, calling it a "fact." Bounoure was never Director or a member of the CNRS, he expressing his distaste at those in his day who argued over the "principles" of evolution, "how" it took place, whether via Lamarckian or Darwinian.

Second, Ray quotes Michael Ruse from his book Darwin's Theory: an Exercise in Science, "An increasing number of evolutionists...argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all...Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials."

Response: Why the spaces in-between phrases? This is a clear sign of creationist quote-mines. Even the original (which does support evolution) can be taken with a large grain of salt due to the lack of credibility that Ruse has in this domain.

Thirdly, Ray quotes Dr. T. N. Tahmisian of the Atomic Energy Commission, "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever." (1974)

Response: Here is the problem: There is no reference in any government agency website as to the existence of a Dr. T. N. Tahmisian.

Finally, Ray quotes British journalist and philosopher Malcolm Muggeridge, "I am convinced myself that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it has applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has." (1981)

Response: First of all, Ray has already demonstrated that Muggeridge does not have the correct credentials to turn to on the subject of evolution, biology, or science.

The Evolution of the Theory Ray tries to explain the story of the concept of evolution came to be by quoting a story from Out Time: The Illustrated History of the 20 Century.

Next, Ray lists several hoaxes, like Piltdown Man and Heidelberg Man. Ray argues that Neanderthal man is not evidence for evolution, because it has been discovered that Neanderthal Man died of exposure to disease and was "fully human, not ape."

Response: The British museum touted the “Piltdown man” as authentic, but the American Museum of Natural History displayed it only as a “mixture of ape and man fossils”, which is what it eventually turned out to be.

There was no way to adequately examine such things back in 1915. Chemical tests –common today- didn’t yet exist and we didn’t yet have a practical understanding of radiation. And before the first australopiths were discovered, we didn’t know exactly what to expect of the links that were then still missing between humans and the other apes known at that time. But as we began filling in the gaps in human evolution with thousands of legitimate fossils, a pattern emerged which left Piltdown an increasingly obvious anomaly. Consequently it was taken off display and stored away almost continuously for decades. It lost importance in most discussions because, in light of everything else we discovered over the next few decades, it just never fit, and was eventually dismissed from the list of potential human ancestors for that reason.

As the years wore on, criticism arose against everyone who ever promoted the Piltdown collection because there seemed to be so much wrong with it. Finally, in the 1950s, it was taken back out of the box and scrutinized via more modern means. First fluorine dating revealed that it was much too recent, and it was shown to have been chemically-treated to give a false impression of its age and mineral composition. Then it was finally determined that the jaw must have come from an orangutan, and that it had been deliberately reshaped with modern tools in a well-crafted and deliberate forgery.

Homo heidelbergensis was “quite human” because he was a human, just not the same species we are. And it was never known from a single jawbone either, but from more than 4,000 bones representing nearly 30 individuals found in one site alone, and there are still dozens more. Their evident descendants, the Neanderthals weren’t “just an old man with arthritis” either. We’ve found hundreds of Neanderthal men, women, and children, and even their DNA, which has provided proof that they were not part of our species!

One hoax cannot indicate the inferiority of conventional archeology, because creationists have several of their own, including Paluxy footprints, the Calaveras skull, Moab Man and Malachite Man, and others. More telling is how people deal with these hoaxes. When Piltdown was exposed, it stopped being used as evidence. The creationist hoaxes, however, can still be found cited as if they were real. Piltdown has been over and done with for decades, but the dishonesty of creationist hoaxes continues.

The Religion of Evolution Ray wonders if there is no evidence for evolution, why is it vastly treated as it does? Ray then quotes Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote the Foreward to the Origin of Species, that "evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable." Finally, Ray quotes physics Prof. H. S. Lispon "In fact, evolution became a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to "bend" their observations to fit it."

Ray agrees with Lispon that evolution is a religion. Ray explains how the acceptance of evolution happens: a believer tells it to a nonbeliever. The nonbeliever does not have to turn from sin, just drop the biblical creation, and thus believes evolution without a shred of evidence.

Response: However, if evolution is a religion, then so is gravity. In all seriousness, evolution is not a religion at all, and creationists knows that. Evolution as religion has even been rejected by the courts: "Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause."(The court cases Epperson v. Arkansas, Willoughby v. Stever, and Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist. are cited as precedent (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 1982))

Ray claims that believers in evolution accept there is a missing link out there somewhere, but to this day (according to Ray we have never found the missing link.

Response: This is a huge lie. The "missing link" has not remained undiscovered. Hasn’t been for a long time now. There was a missing link in 1859 when there were only two species of humans yet known in the fossil record, and no intermediate fossils to link them with any of the other apes we knew of at that time. Since then, we’ve found the fossils of thousands of individuals of dozens of hominid species, many of which provide a definite link to the other apes. But there were two particular pieces predicted to complete the puzzle:

First, it was never supposed that we evolved from any ape species still alive today. Instead the theory held that chimpanzees and humans were sibling species, daughters of the same mother. So the first link we needed to find was an ancient ape apparently basal to either of us –to prove there was a potential progenitor of both groups. We had already found that link in Europe five years before Darwin went public. So we already had an evident “chain” of transitional species from which only one more “link” was needed.

The theory then required that another extinct hominid be found in strata chronologically between the Miocene Dryopithecus fontana and the earliest known human species, which from 1891 to 1961, was Homo erectus. We’ve found lots of candidates, as many as fifty species of apes which are now all extinct. But more than that, the theory also demanded that we find one “half-way” between humans and other apes in terms of morphology. We found exactly that too way back in 1974! Australopithecus afarensis proved to be a fully bi-pedal ape who’s hands, feet, teeth, pelvis, skull, and other physical details were exactly what creationists challenged us to find, yet they’re still pretending we never found it.

But worse than that, we didn’t just find that one. In 1977, three years after we discovered the no-longer-missing link in the human evolutionary lineage, Harvard paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould mentioned an “extreme rarity” of other clear transitions persistent in the fossil record until that time, and his comment, -taken out of context- remains a favorite of creationist quote-miners to this day. But in the more than 30 years since then, there has been a paleontological boom such that we now have way more transitional species in many more lineages than we ever needed or hoped for.

Now the problem for evolution is that there are too many contenders, while a compounding problem for creationists is that not even one of them should exist if their story was true. And yet they do –by the bushelful! Despite their complaints to the contrary, the intermediate gradations in the human evolutionary line are now so fine that paleoanthropologists can’t agree whether they’re all different species or merely mildly modified varieties of the same ones, such that there are no more links needed for human evolution anymore.

But creationists still say we’ve never found anything that was “half-ape and half-human”. Adhering always to black or white absolutes, and being thus unwilling to admit any degree of variance other than 100% or zero, they make sure to divide every find into one of two boxes even when they can’t make up their minds which side of that imaginary partition each one belongs to.

Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans ARE apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!

Ray ends this section with a brief explanation about the validity of Genesis. Ray claims that the theory of evolution came from the minds of people who do not know God and have conjured up something to explain human origins. Ray says that scientists speak "in the language of speculation"—— that is, they never speak with absolute certainty whereas the Genesis account does.

Response: However, the reason for this is because science must remain falsifiable. As new data constantly comes in, theories and facts may change or be disproven. So scientists speak with caution and try at their best degree to be accurate. Simply speaking in absolute terms does not alter reality in favor of personal beliefs or wishful thinking. As already seen through the review of this book, the supposed "facts" in the Genesis account are not facts at all! For a book to speak in such absolute terms while claiming to be infallible and yet it is still demonstrably wrong.

Never-Changing Bible, Ever-Changing Science Ray lists several vague news reports of scientists finding new discoveries that altered their previous views. For instance, NBC report of a discovery in Australia in August 1999 that life had originated there, but the date was a billion years earlier than scientists previously thought.

Response: While this may seem as a jump, never once has science estimated the earth is anywhere close to 6,000 years old.

Another report on CBS News in October 1999 that a 40 million-year-old fossil was found in Asia that changed the scientist mind of where humans had originated. It was once believed that man came from Africa, but no longer.

Response: However, this is a false reporting. The prediction that humans originated from Africa still remains true.

Finally, USA Today (March 21, 2001) reported, “Paleontologists have discovered a new skeleton in the closet of human ancestry that is likely to force science to revise, if not scrap, current theories of human origins.” Reuters reported that the discovery left “scientists of human evolution... confused,” saying, “Lucy may not even be a direct human ancestor after all.”

Response: Nothing on the internet has revealed such a report. As for Lucy, she is and remains a direct human ancestor (along with a dozen or so discovered fossils).

Ray quote Charles Spurgeon in an attempt to make the claims of scientists seem foolish and faith-based.

“We are invited, brethren, most earnestly to go away from the old-fashioned belief of our forefathers because of the supposed discoveries of science. What is science? The method by which man tries to hide his ignorance. It should not be so, but so it is. You are not to be dogmatical in theology, my brethren, it is wicked; but for scientific men it is the correct thing. You are never to assert anything very strongly; but scientists may boldly assert what they cannot prove, and may demand a faith far more credulous than any we possess. Forsooth, you and I are to take our Bibles and shape and mould our belief according to the ever-shifting teachings of so-called scientific men. What folly is this! Why, the march of science, falsely so called, through the world may be traced by exploded fallacies and abandoned theories. Former explorers once adored are now ridiculed; the continual wreckings of false hypotheses is a matter of universal notoriety. You may tell where the supposed learned have encamped by the debris left behind of suppositions and theories as plentiful as broken bottles.”

Chapter 13: Science and Evolution

Ray tells the reader if they still think there is evidence for evolution, they should go to Ray's website (www.raycomfort.com) which links to Kent Hovind's $250,000 prize to anyone who can prove evolution and that no one has claimed the prize.

Response: Going to Ray's website will accomplish nothing accept entering a intellectual-free site, deprived of academic credentials and support, with all rationality tossed out the window.

It is common knowledge that the so-called $250,000 prize is a scam, just like Ray's $10,000 prize for anyone to bring for a "living" transitional fossil. The prize set up by Mr. Kent Hovind is fallacious and constructed to make every entry fail on purpose. The judges of this challenge are anonymous and secret, to be hand-picked by Hovind. It is virtually inconceivable that Hovind would pick judges who are not sympathetic to his beliefs.

James “the Amazing” Randi, a former Las Vegas illusionist well-versed in the angles used in supernatural pseduoscience -has for ten years- offered a million-dollar prize for anyone who can show testable evidence of the things we should expect would also be true if there were etherial entities influencing things with molecular structures. In that time, he has exposed a few frauds. But to date, no one has ever produced any actual evidence for faith-healing, telepaths, psionics, precognative psychic friends with astral bodies, past life remembrance, or spectral manifestations of any kind. Talismans, incantations, elemental component spells, enchantments, clairvoyance and prophesies all consistently fail every test.

The evidence for evolution is mind-blowing, that all can be observed, documented, tested and proven both in nature and in the lab. ERVs, atavisms, transitional forms, physiological, anatomical, and molecular vestiges, ontogeny and developmental biology, protein functional redundancy, convergent phenotypes, mobile genes, observed speciation, or the myriad methods of dating geologic stratigraphy, nor any twin-nested hierarchy of phylogenetic clades. All of these are peer-reviewed and verified accurate evidence positively promoting evolution as well as directly disproving creationism. But you know what we’ve never seen? We’ve never seen anything “created”. No one has ever seen a complex life-form (or anything else) magically pop out of thin air. But that’s what creationists like Ray Comfort are arguing for!

Ray then claims evolution is a religion. While using Funk & Wagnull dictionary, which defines religion as "a set of beliefs that concerned with explaining the origins and purposes of the universe." Ray says that scientist even speak in a language of religion: we believe, perhaps, maybe, probably, could've, possibly. Ray says Charles Darwin is the founder of the faith and it's god is "nature" (often referred to as 'Mother Nature').

Response: Here, Ray is just spewing utter nonsense. The definition brought forth is very vague, and leaves out certain things like sacred texts, holidays, rituals, and such.

The so-called "language of speculation" is actually the language of honesty and humbleness. Science never claims to be 100% sure all the time, everything in science must be falsifiable - which means future uncovering data could completely prove it incorrect. Science is progressive and pushes knowledge forward, which is why that anyone making certain claims that is not completely understood should be sure not to make an incorrect statement. But if you believe in truth at all, then you should make sure that the things you say actually are true, that they are defensibly accurate, and academically correct. And if they’re not correct, you should correct them! You wouldn’t claim to know anything you couldn’t prove that you knew, and you wouldn’t talk about anything being “proven” at all, unless you’re clearly using that term in the sense that a court of law would use. Scientists must choose their words very carefully, because science is brutal in peer-review, and no scientist would ever get away with any of the wild raving propaganda which religious zealots or the news media use. That’s why they say the devil is in the details!

First of all, “truth” is more than just facts. It implies something that is completely true, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So every word of it better be accurate, or it isn’t truth at all; and depending on the topic, such a concept is likely beyond human comprehension anyway. Truth may be pursued but never possessed. That’s why we should trust those who seek the truth and doubt those who claim to have it! A fact is a unit of information that is verifiably true beyond dispute, and obviously beliefs based on the conflicting faiths of different religions cannot qualify as that.

Finally, Charles Darwin did not invent a new faith of any type. Evolution is a fact based on mountains of evidence collected for more than 150 years - all constantly proving evolution to be true every time. Evolution does not comment on the "origins and purpose of the universe" at all. All evolution does is explain the diversity we see in life, it does not say how life started or its purpose. Nor does evolution exclude the possibility of God, many scientists accept God and the Bible.